The next object of liberation in South Africa must be the national economy, Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi said on Tuesday.
”Our people have been given political rights, but they still lack the freedom to participate fully in the market economy,” he said in an online letter.
The labour market remained constrained by racially defined regulations resulting in skills shortages. Financial markets still bore the brunt of sanctions-busting strategies.
As a result, 13 years after liberation, many South Africans still felt they had not been liberated at all, as evidenced by their increasing protests against the lack of service delivery.
”The obvious danger here is that the lack of progress in achieving economic rights will unravel the hard-fought for political rights,” Buthelezi said.
The South African Communist Party would argue for a classic Marxist revolution
to reverse the trend.
Indeed, a large segment of the ruling African National Congress’s post-1994 delivery had been based on the premise of wealth redistribution rather than wealth creation, he said.
”I believe that the primary political right is the right to vote. I also believe that the best place for the electorate to decide future economic policy is at the ballot box,” he said.
For his part, Buthelezi said the argument had always been ”more about wealth creation than wealth redistribution”.
The IFP had consistently advocated a free enterprise economy in which the fruits of growth were shared on merit.
”It would appear that if we concentrate our focus on formulating clear political choices and public policy preferences, we may actually find a way out of the current malaise,” he said. – Sapa